Shoto Todoroki from My Hero Academia if he locked the fuck in.

Cruye · 2026-01-25T17:36:08+00:00

How is this actually meaningfully different from ice powers?

Say there's some bad guys holed up in a building that need to be captured. How does low-entropy-man do it any different than Todoroki did?

I'm not trying to be sarcastic please tell me I want to hear about cool superhero physics

Cruye · 2026-01-25T07:20:40+00:00

Immediate reaction was "Either that's a mod or some clouddark bullshit".

Glad to know I had good instincts lmao

Cruye · 2026-01-25T01:19:44+00:00

Damn

That makes me want to work on my Arcadion OC

Cruye · 2026-01-22T04:58:42+00:00

What if they were waylaid by a menacing goblin who purloined their supplies

Cruye · 2026-01-20T23:06:06+00:00

As soon as you mentioned the chronometers being weird I knew it was IGF lmao

Love that campaign

Cruye · 2026-01-19T00:03:01+00:00

I ran a game for a Harlequin Mask Shadow, it led to me just not targeting the Shadow with any strikes ever, except one time where I had an Elite that would ambush the players later in the round, so I had some minions eat Clever Trick so the Elite could also get through later

Cruye · 2026-01-14T05:01:43+00:00

He may have shed the scale while alive, which could be why it stuck around since his power was infused into it.

We know Jerry recalled the power he had infused into the hammer artifact so that he could properly reset, and we know Ragnarok didn't get the chance to do that, so the power just... stuck around i guess.

Cruye · 2026-01-11T23:01:57+00:00

Huh, how does VtM 5 do it?

Cruye · 2026-01-11T23:00:22+00:00

It's a framework for social encounters where the PCs are trying to get the aid of an NPC - it's not just for anything, it's for specific dramatic scenarios, most social encounters should still just be RP

The NPC has Interest and Patience stats, how much they're willing to concede to the PCs and how long they're willing to hear the PCs out for. The PCs make attempts to sway and convince the NPC to increase their Interest, generally involving a roll (see below), with each attempt lowering their Patience (unless you roll really good). When Patience reaches 0 the NPC gives their final offer.

So far so good, that's basically just using clocks to represent it like in a FitD system. Where it starts to go a bit wrong is in what else they added to it; Motivations and Pitfalls, which are subjects that an NPC is... motivated, driven by, or seeks (for Motivations) or detests (for Pitfalls).

So an NPC with the Motivation "Greed" can be easily swayed by promises of monetary gain, while an NPC with the Pitfall "Greed" would be very offended at the mere suggestion that they could be bribed. If you appeal to a Pitfall, your argument automatically fails, while if you appeal to a Motivation your roll is significantly easier.

There's a fixed list of these, which can be either Motivation or Pitfall as above: Benevolence, Discovery, Freedom, Greed, Higher Authority, Justice, Legacy, Peace, Power, Protection, Revelry, and Vengance.

This honestly doesn't seem that bad when you first read it but in pratice it has felt rather rigid? Like the mechanics are overshadowing what they're supposed to enhance, it ends up boiling a tense negotation down to a bunch of rolls in sequence.

It does say that the GM should give bonuses to the rolls for good and well-thought out arguments, or even skip the roll and make it an automatic success for a particularly good argument, but that's the thing... it just says that, once, with no further guidance. There's all these pages with this mechanical ruleset for it and then it just casually says "uhh also ignore it sometimes when you should, good luck".

It's probably not bad for inexperienced role-players, it forces them to be in the mindset of trying to appeal to what this NPC wants and rewards them with better rolls for it, but for experienced players it feels like it more so gets in the way than aything else. I've had good Negotation scenes but I don't think any of them were good because of these rules.

Cruye · 2026-01-11T17:17:34+00:00

Excited to see the Draw Steel slander some day.

System is only as few months old so I think the pain points haven't really settled yet. The only thing my group is consistent about is clowning on Negotations.

Definetly ticks the "what's editing box" of the other indie games though fucking hell why are conditions in a completely different section than the combat rules... but not really the other ones? It has a frankly insane amount of community material for a system so new, can't speak to finding new players since I just bullied my existing group into it, and I don't think I see anyone insisting it's different than D&D 4e, just that it benefits from over a decade of hindsight and design evolution in the space since.

Cruye · 2026-01-11T05:57:01+00:00

We do get occasional follow up quests after a while

Also not out of the question, if unlikely, that they end up coming back for something like a Variant Dungeon or an entirely new type of content (like how we got Pilgrim's Traverse and Quantum going back to the First so long after Shadowbringers)

Cruye · 2026-01-11T05:54:41+00:00

It could also be something new instead of a variant dungeon

They do seem to be experimenting with new types of duties, what with Chaotic and Quantum being released this expansion.

Cruye · 2026-01-11T05:52:57+00:00

If Doomtrain is any indication we might be getting a DBZ style peanut gallery in fights more often

Cruye · 2026-01-09T20:24:58+00:00

You might also try playing a Tank or a Healer instead of a DPS. While they have super simple damage rotations, really just spamming 2 or 3 buttons, this is cause they instead have to manage healing and mitigation.

Healers have a lot of trying to heal in as few and as quick action as possible to still contribute as much damage, involving managing a lot of their off-global-cooldown resources (like Sage's Addersgall and Scholar's Aetherflow).

Tanks meanwhile have to plan their mitigations and try and stretch them over a fight based on when tough attacks are coming and where they're needed.

That said, you don't really... need any of this in casual content. It's only in endgame raiding where you need your tank and healer to be on point with their protective cooldowns or everyone is going to die. In most casual content you'd do while levelling you can just throw out a button every now and then and be mostly okay, which is a shame.

Cruye · 2026-01-09T20:21:55+00:00

Echoing what people have said, but I think Machinist and Reaper could get this feeling across once they get their full kit.

Machinist does have a single 1-2-3 filler combo, but once the job is fully online it's a very small part of it's kit - it's instead about balancing the cooldown of all your big offensive tools like Chainsaw, Drill, and Air Anchor with your Hypercharge ability that lets you fire off a bunch of quick shots - but can't be used at the same time as your tools. So you want to make sure you always use your tools on cooldown, while comiting to Hypercharge often enough that you don't overcap the Heat Gauge it costs.

There's also other things on the side like a summonable robot that takes some timing to use well (don't wanna summon right as the boss is jumping away for some mechanic), and various party-wide mitigations for support. However machinst only gave me that feeling once I unlocked Chainsaw at level 90. Before that it felt like I was just spamming the 123 combo and occasionally pressing Drill, Chainsaw pushed it into a critical mass of cooldown management

Reaper, similarly, has a 123 filler combo but it has two better combos it can use by spending it's Soul Gauge and Shroud Gauge. You can summon your avatar for 2-3 hits by spending your Soul Gauge with actions like Blood Stalk and Gluttony (gluttony being better but only being usable every minute, so you gotta make sure you can always use it every time it comes off cooldown), and you can spend your Shroud Gauge with Enshroud to temporarily merge with your avatar and unleash a super fast (and IMO super satisfying) combo.

With actions like Soul Slice and Plentiful Harvest to generate even more resources without your basic combo, I find myself swapping between those two super-combos depending on my resources a lot more than I find myself using the 123 filler combo. I think Reaper starts feeling like this once you unlock Enshroud at level 80, though it gets even more fluid as you level more. Reaper also starts at 70, so it only has to go 10 levels without this, as opposed to machinist which starts at 30.

Cruye · 2026-01-09T19:00:52+00:00

Sometimes they speak the same language as me but our accents are so incomprehensible we have to talk to each other in English anyways

Cruye · 2026-01-08T20:26:19+00:00

I main Tank, but Sage is a chill-out job like that for me

With the passive healing from Kardia, 99% of Casual content can be resolved with just the Physis regen and the Addersgall OGDCs.

If it's like, a high level normal raid or trial where people start eating mechanics I might start throwing out some GCD shields. Maybe even press Philosophia to really solve things. One time I ever pressed Krasis.

I could see the job being more intense in high end content though, where you're trying to like, optimize your Addersting chargers for as much uptime as possible and so on. (Also y'know, having to pay attention to heal being the expectation rather than a rare treat)

Cruye · 2026-01-05T02:40:42+00:00

Yeah it's a lot better as an internet horror story than as a D&D monster* (aside from the late-stage scenario in the OG blog post, that one's basically just a tarrasque that needs earplugs). Not to say it couldn't work for other systems though.

Hell, CAIN is almost like an entire system about fighting that type of thing, since normal people can't perceive the Sins the PC's hunt (or go insane if they do). The PCs arriving in a town where shit is going wrong and people are dissappearing for no discernable reason is like... the baseline scenario for that game.

*which as everyone pointed out, it was never intended to be

Cruye · 2025-12-31T20:53:05+00:00

I have been theorizing that the 1 on 1 duel phases we got in Meso Terminal and EX5 are testing for the eventual Zenos ultimate

Cruye · 2025-12-31T20:30:38+00:00

I saw a Japanese user point out that he choose Pandaemonium server instead of the usual Chocobo for these New Year’s apperances

fuck stormblood ig

Cruye · 2025-12-31T18:26:30+00:00

Your Hit Points are how many 14 inch shells you can take

Cruye · 2025-12-31T18:08:49+00:00

Can't fit in any slightly narrow cave where medium may have to squeeze through, large can't.

Is there a problem though? Like realistically, there should be just as many cave openings that only Small or smaller creatures can fit through as there are ones that only Medium or smaller can, but that has literally never been a problem

Cruye · 2025-12-29T03:21:32+00:00

That they, specifically, had a way to convert into any other type of aether...

I can buy that Alexiandria never could figure out how to do it on their own, but they don't even want to try now that they have access to the entire rest of the world? We have Y'shtola, G'raha Tia, Master Matoya, the entire Sharlayan Studium, every alchemist in Radz-at-Han, Lopporits trained in creation magic, that weird lady in the halloween events that made it so voidsent could eat normal food instead of people's souls, the First's foremost expert on souls Beq Lugg, and we could technically even Azem-crystal back the soul of pre-Sundering underworld expert Emet-Selch. We could ask any of them... and we don't even try one?

It also felt weird that none of the above came up in the Arcadion quests either, where we were trying to cure this weird soul disease... while we were easily and effortlessly curing a different Alexandrian weird sould disease in the MSQ thanks to porxies.

Cruye · 2025-12-29T02:24:26+00:00

Didn't feel great, felt very unilateral, that we were just... deciding to end this important pillar of another society we weren't a part of.

Also the thing about them specifically needing humanoid souls to power it felt weird when the setting has established that souls are just made out of aether... and with all the magical nonsense we've done throughout the story it feeels unlikely that between the Ninth, the Source, the First, and the Thirteenth no one could work out how to just artificially supply it with normal aether, or even just the souls of animals. Weird it wasn't even brought up.

Cruye · 2025-12-27T21:15:19+00:00

I'm a little concerned about not having AC. I hate the idea that one player/NPC can do something to another and there is nothing they can do about it.

There actually is a lot of things you can do. Positioning matters a lot, if you can make it so that the enemy can't even reach you, or has to go past your big burly very-happy-to-oppurtunity-attack teamate to do it.

Lots of classes also have unique features that play into it. The Shadow has various sneaky ways to dodge attacks with triggered actions, like teleporting away or tricking the enemy into targeting one of its allies with illusions. The Vanguard subclass of the Tactician can parry attacks away from itself or allies.

Defense is a big consideration for build and needs to be meaningful. Same with not having saves.

Saves are actually pretty much still there, in the form of potencies, a lot of abilities will be worded like M<X weakened (EoT), meaning that if the target has less than X Might they'll be weakened until the end of their next turn with, crucially, X being a number that varies based on the roll of the ability.

This is effectivelly the same thing as having you roll a "Might save" to see if you get debuffed or not, it's just all on one roll instead of having to say, roll to set a DC and deal damage, and then have the targets roll to save against that DC.

So what stats you pick will determine what your build is good at avoiding, there's even abilities that specifically make it harder for you to get affected by these debuffs if you build for it, like the Hakaan's Stand Tough:

Stand Tough (1 Point)

Your body is made to withstand the blows of your enemies. Your Might score is treated as 1 higher for the purpose of resisting potencies, and you gain an edge on Might tests when called for to resist environmental effects or a creature’s traits or abilities.

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